This week’s Newsweek…[debunked] the figurehead of the so-called “modern slavery movement”…Mam claims to have rescued more than 4,000 girls from sex slavery, but questions about her stories still arise from former staff members, her former husband and those supposed former sex slaves…Mam’s…pernicious web of obfuscations and self-aggrandizements…keep women’s economic opportunities around the world hovering somewhere near deplorable…Many of her accolades…can be traced back to her friendship with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. As of press time he still lists the Somaly Mam Foundation as a “partner” in Half the Sky Movement, his blatant attempt (along with wife Sheryl WuDunn) to brand and therefore profit from economic and physical violence against women and girls in the Global South…Kristof may, eventually, claim to have been duped. I believe he’ll be lying (again)…Mam can’t be held accountable for the impact of her tales as much as she can for establishing the culture of permanent victimhood…what…anti-human trafficking NGOs do…is normalize existent labor opportunities for women, however low the pay, dangerous the conditions, or abusive an environment they may be. And they shame women who reject such jobs…What anti-trafficking NGOs are saving women from…is a life outside the international garment trade…

…Mam’s…portrayal of all sex workers as victims in need of saving encouraged raids and rescue operations that only hurt the sex workers themselves. In 2008, Cambodia enacted new prohibitions on commercial sex, after the country was placed on a watch list by the State Department. In brutal raids on brothels and in parks…women were chased down, detained and assaulted. The State Department commended [this]…and removed the country from the watch list…Mam’s target audience of well-off Westerners, eager to do good, often knows little about the sex trade. It doesn’t require much for them to imagine all women who sell sex as victims in need of rescue…When Mira Sorvino arrived with CNN last year to film sex workers undercover in Phnom Penh, Ros Sokunthy of the Women’s Network for Unity [WNU] told the Asian Correspondent news site that this approach was part of the problem: “You show the face of the mother, who is so poor that she has to sell her daughter for money? How does this help the daughter or mother? It doesn’t. It helps the NGO to make money”…A “hero” like Ms. Mam lets those who lift her up feel that they are heroes, too. They can be saviors simply by repeating her stories and swiping their cards. Now Ms. Mam has been exposed before her donors and the Western media who anointed her and made fighting sex trafficking a kind of industry in itself, while sex workers suffered the consequences. Will Ms. Mam’s supporters consider the price of what they’ve been sold?

…CNN…”poverty porn” [does] not sit well with…WNU…Ros Sokunthy…said rich donors would rather support anti trafficking groups with an…agenda to stop all sex work, than those that help sex workers and their children get out of poverty…Pisey Ly…[said that the Somaly Mam Foundation] “still [praises]…Somaly and…[does] not recognize the consequences of how [they]…impacted people”…anti-trafficking organizations tend to be against all sex work, not just…forced sex work…When consenting sex workers are arrested or “rescued,” their children suffer. With their mothers gone and no money or food coming in, they must find work, even though they are children…

What about the Great White Savior, Nicholas Kristof, who as observed above is more complicit than any other individual in enabling Mam’s depredations against sex workers? Over the weekend, he quietly removed her page from his website; the first picture above is what it looked like before, and this is what it looks like now:

Fittingly, Kristof issued his “explanation” and “apology” (which as you might expect was neither) on International Whores’ Day; predictably, it was not so much an admission of rescue industry fraud as a lament that Mam’s well-deserved downfall will make it harder for other rescue industry operations to continue enriching themselves at the expense of sex workers:

…I don’t know quite what to think. Somaly stands by her story, but she also resigned, which gives credence to the allegations…serious doubts have clearly been raised about her…but I’m reluctant to be an arbiter of her back story when I just don’t know what is true and false…Whatever the situation with Somaly, there’s no uncertainty about the larger issue of human trafficking in Cambodia…One risk is that girls fleeing Cambodian brothels will no longer get help. Another is that the debate about Somaly’s back story will overtake the imperative of ending the trafficking of young teenagers into brothels. Let’s remember that this is about more than one woman.

I suggest Kristof heed his own closing statement, though I know he won’t; he and other prohibitionists believe the feelings, beliefs and political agenda of a vocal minority which includes himself, politicians, neofeminists and fundamentalist Christians take precedence over the needs of many millions of sex workers, their clients, their children and everyone else they help. Prohibitionists aren’t literally “one woman”, but their numbers are tiny compared to those of the people they wish to control and overrule. Furthermore, I hardly think Kristof need worry about the “sex trafficking” gravy train running off of the rails just yet:

For the first time, pastors and police joined together in…Cambodia…to discuss human trafficking….IJM staff led nearly fifty church leaders through a study on the Bible’s call to seek justice for the oppressed, and then [a cop]…shared about human trafficking and how church leaders can help their communities report the crime…One pastor encouraged her peers to think creatively about how they could work with police for good…The chief of the Cambodian anti-trafficking police…shared tell-tale signs of trafficking and advised pastors of the kinds of questions they can ask if they suspect a girl is in trouble…

The “sex trafficking” hysteria is beginning to implode, and the vultures will eventually need to find another carcass to feed on. But there’s still a lot of meat left on this one, and they won’t leave until they’ve picked off every scrap.

The thing is that Kristof will never be held responsible for any of this. Pundits/journalists never are. The architects of the Iraq War and the pundits who said it would be a cakewalk still get five-figure speaking fees. The architects of the financial crisis and the pundits who said there was no real estate bubble still draw five-, six- or seven-figure salaries. And I guarantee you that the journalist who built his career on lies and fraud will continue to be a success.

Actually, I’m doubtful that even Mam will be held responsible. She’ll always have her supporters, just like every other fraud in recent history.

“The actions of women like Mam and useful idiots like Kristof just obscure the real problems of a lack of opportunity for women to have decent work and respectable lives in Cambodia and elsewhere”

Sigh. Because sex work isn’t “decent” or “respectable”, of course. It’s never a legitimate choice, it’s always something that a woman one way or another is forced to do. Oh, if only there were more jobs at the Nike factory!

Apparently the gov’t had commissioned a scientific poll before the so-called consultation which they have chosen to not release because it doesn’t support their position. I suppose that is why they went with the self selection consultation as it was more likely to support their predetermined approach which at first look seems to be an even more virulent version of the Nordic model.
If the facts don’t fit the theory, discard the facts

Also, McKay claimed that “most Canadians” are anti-prostitution which, as you pointed out with the poll, they are not. Moreover, many of the articles in the Canadian press have been supportive of decrim and certainly consulting with sex worker rights orgs.

Those pesky facts and ethics. Always getting in the way of moralizing and authoritarianism.

Thanks, Maggie, for your role in shining a truthful light on this–it sure looks to me like Mam was engaged in widespread lies for purposes other than what she claimed them to be.

I wonder how the timing of this works to the advantage of sex worker rights advocates in Canada who oppose the Swedish-model legislation just introduced in Parliament. How many of the so-called “facts” that form the foundation of this bill can be traced to the now-discredited Mam?

The anti-trafficking line will be that Mam was an aberration who hoodwinked her supporters, not at all typical of the anti-sex NGOs. Other anti-sex NGOs having been a little more careful to conceal their lies, they’ll be harder to expose. What the Mam thing may well provide is a tool for actual journalists to pry open NGO lies … if Mam and her NGO is misrepresenting sex trafficking for profit, is NGO X doing so? The answer will almost always be “Yes” since there would not be enough work to make NGO workers well paid unless forced sex trafficking is conflated with all sex work. Getting stories about those lies in print just got a lot easier, thanks to the exposure of Mam’s lies.

Funny, all this discussion and the word “feminism” hasn’t been uttered once. This is driven by feminist hysteria and anti-sex worker attitudes. There is massive funding and many jobs at stake in the NGO world and in govt based on the hugely inflated numbers of women being trafficked.

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